A working title while in development was Sur la planète Ygam (On the Planet Ygam),[3] which is where most of the story takes place; the actual title (The Fantastic/Savage Planet) is the name of Ygam's moon. The film won the special jury prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival.[4] It had a total of 809,945 admissions in France.[5]

Contents

In the distant future, the gargantuan blue humanoid Draags have brought human beings (who are called Oms as a play on the French word for "man", homme) from Earth to the planet Ygam, where they maintain a technologically and spiritually advanced society. The Draags consider Oms animals, and while they keep some as pets, others live in the wilderness and are periodically slaughtered by the Draags, who wish to control their population. Draags have much longer lifespans than Oms, but reproduce much less.

When an Om mother is teased to death by three Draag children, her orphaned infant is found by Master Sinh, a key Draag leader, and his daughter Tiva, who keeps the boy as a pet and names him Terr. Tiva loves Terr and is careful not to hurt him, but, in accordance with her parents' instructions, keeps him under control, giving him a collar with which she can pull him in any direction. She brings Terr to sessions in which she receives her education using headphones that transmit knowledge into her mind, and a defect in his collar allows him to receive the knowledge too. Around the time that Tiva grows into her teens and first performs Draag meditation, which allows the species to travel with their minds, she loses some interest in Terr, who has become a young man and acquired much Draag knowledge. He escapes into the wilderness, stealing Tiva's headphones.

There he runs into a wild female Om, who cuts off his collar and introduces him to her tribe, which lives in an abandoned Draag park full of strange creatures and landscapes. Terr shows them how to use the headphones to acquire Draag knowledge and literacy, winning the right to do so in a duel. The literacy they gain allows them to read a Draag announcement that the park will be purged of Oms, and, when the purge comes, some are slaughtered by Draag technology while others escape, joining forces with another tribe. They are attacked by two Draag passers-by and manage to kill one of them before escaping to an abandoned Draag rocket depot, much to the outrage of Draag leaders. They live there for years, joined by many other Oms, and, due to the knowledge acquired from Terr's headphones, manage to replicate Draag technology, including two rockets; they hope to leave Ygam for its moon, the Fantastic Planet, and live there safe from Draags. When a large-scale Draag purge hits the depot and many Oms are slaughtered, a group led by Terr uses the rockets to flee to the Fantastic Planet, where they discover large statues that Draags travel to during meditation and use to meet beings from other galaxies in a strange ritual that maintains their species. The Oms destroy some of the statues, threatening the Draags' existence; the genocide is halted on Ygam, and, facing a crisis, the Draags sue for peace. This leads to an era of peaceful coexistence between the two species, who now benefit from each other's way of thinking.

Fantastic Planet is recognisable for its surreal, psychedelic imagery, created by French writer and artist Roland Topor, who was the production designer and co-writer of the film. The landscape and lifeforms of Ygam are extremely strange, as are various aspects of Draag society, such as their meditation (which allows them to commune psychically with each other and different species and can lead to transformations of their shape and colour) and their technology (such as the devices they use to slaughter Oms). The film's weird atmosphere is enhanced by its soundtrack, composed by Alain Goraguer.

The relationship between Draags and Oms, which changes completely over the course of the film, can be seen as allegorical of the relationship between various groups of humans, as well as between humans and animals, drawing on themes such as racism and speciesism (in the final scene, a Draag child from the future is learning about the peace between Draags and Oms while stroking a doglike pet where Draag children would once have stroked a pet Om). It is the knowledge Terr gains and brings to the Oms that allows them to become the Draags' equals, and Terr has to win a duel to prove that it is not wrong to use it. The ending, in which the violence suddenly stops and an era of peace begins, with both Draags and Oms deciding they have nothing to gain from mutual destruction, carries a hopeful message relevant to the Cold War period in which the film and its source novel were created.

Burnt-in English subtitles on Anchor Bay's USA DVD release spell the name of the blue-skinned species as "Draag"; the original novel the film is based on spells it as "Traag".

In 2006, Eureka Entertainment released the film on DVD in the UK as #34 in their Masters of Cinema range. Unlike the Anchor Bay release, this uses an anamorphic widescreen transfer and newly translated subtitles that retain the "Draag" spelling. This version was released in Region 1 on October 23, 2007. In August 2010, Eureka released a restored high-definition transfer of the film on Blu-ray Disc, with special features including a collection of Laloux's short films and a 27-minute documentary called Laloux sauvage. Eureka, a London-based company, has produced the edition only as a Region B release.

On October 23, 2007, Facets Video and Accent Cinema released a newly restored version on DVD, including many bonus features never available before. It is different from the Eureka version.

Madlib cites the film as an influence, using visuals from it on his album covers and samples of the soundtrack in his songs. The song "Come On Feet", on his album The Unseen, contains many samples from the movie, including the recurring main theme.[7]